Back cover blurb: On a desert planet the giant sandminer
crawls through the howling sandstorms, harvesting the valuable minerals in
the sand. Inside, the humans relax in luxury, while most of the work is
done by the robots who serve them. Then the Doctor and Leela arrive - and
the mysterious deaths begin. First suspects, then hunted victims, Leela
and the Doctor must find the hidden killer - or join the other victims of
the Robots of Death.

This novelisation has a special place for me as way back at the age of
eight years old I wrote my first ever Who review of it for an essay
in my English lessons. Sadly (or happily?) I no longer have it as the
exercise book has long since vanished so it won't be appearing here. Nor
can I remember much about what I said then, though it was probably along
the lines of "it's great".

Rereading it again all these years later I get the sense that this is
one of the books that Terrance Dicks was able to put more effort into than
merely recycling the camera scripts. In just a few paragraphs we learn
about the way the robots are reanked, how the Sandminer operates, how the
humans have settled into a lazy lifestyle, how the Founding Families
maintained their position and how self-made men like Uvanov carry huge
chips on their shoulders. We also get get glimpses of the Doctor's
thoughts as he first works out how to try and explain to Leela why the
TARDIS is bigger on the inside than the outside, or his reasoning when
caught in one of the sand tanks and he realises he needs to take safe
action not quick action.

Mystery stories are often amongst the hardest to pull off in print
without giving away who the murderer is, but here Dicks manages to achieve
it by focusing upon the Doctor, Leela and the robots. The confined
environment they have arrived in is described well, as are the characters.
In places Dicks' descriptions are so precise that it is clear he must have
been working with either a videotape or publicity pictures from the
televised story.

Onscreen the story itself is very well written, indeed probably the
best of all the Tom Baker stories and so it would be hard to much it up.
The story is structured around shattering the assumptions of one of the
basic principles of robotics that Isaac Asimov devised, namely that no
robot can harm a human being, but this is not expanded upon heavily beyond
being the inherent understanding of all the humans aboard the Sandminer.
Instead the tension and fear is expanded upon as the humans are slowly
picked off one by one and the survivors become increasingly paranoid. Each
of the main supporting characters is expounded upon, especially Uvanov who
becomes more likeable as the story progresses, whilst even Dask/Taren
Capel comes across as sympathetic due to a deprived childhood driving him
insane. Throughout there is a constant reminder of the dangers, both from
the robots within and also from the desert without.

At 102 pages this book isn't the longest and there is a clear sense
that with even 120 pages Dicks wold have been able to enhance it further,
but as it stands this is a quick but highly enjoyable read. 7/10